Data Delights

Dispatches from a Data Science course

Prof. Brittney E. Bailey and her Data Science students

Fall 2021

As the semester comes to a close, we are delighted to share some data-driven discoveries from the Fall 2021 sections of Data Science at Amherst College!

Scroll down to explore the students’ blog posts or use the navigation bar on the side to jump to a particular group!

Blog Posts

The Purple Tusks: The National Struggle for our Wellbeing During a Global Pandemic

As COVID-19 uprooted every aspect of our lives and put us into isolation, the importance of mental health has been recognized more and more. The initial wave of COVID was filled with fear, confusion, loneliness and many other unexpected emotions. Debates over government response became more and more partisan as the pandemic started becoming the new normal.

Revisiting 2020: Revisiting 2020

2020 was a hectic year. Looking back, specifically at the election, our project group wanted to better understand which events, trends, and other factors had the greatest impact on the U.S.’s Presidential Election. To examine these factors, we looked at a wide range of datasets in order to gain the broadest possible view of issues relevant to the American electorate during 2020. In addition to election forecasting data from FiveThirtyEight, we used data from Johns Hopkins University on the COVID…

Data Ballers: A Deep Dive into the Changed NBA

As passionate NBA fans, we spend much of our free time watching and discussing basketball. Thus, when presented with the opportunity to apply data analysis to a real-world context, we focused on the NBA. Our goal: understand the modern NBA. In particular, we concentrated on comparisons, as we believe that data analysis serves as a powerful tool for quantifying and visualizing the game of basketball. We hope our blog will be helpful for both casual and diehard NBA fans, as well as those with even…

Los Hermanos Intermareales: Beaches in Galicia

Our blog is intended to inform users about the sediment nutrients, algal cover, fauna diversity, and locations of eight different sites in Galicia, Spain: Two on Playa America, and one on each of Playa Carnota, Corrubedo, Barra, Nerga, Lanzada, and Samil. Our blog is centered around visualizations that highlight the diversity of the beaches, exploring both the similarities between different beaches’ diversity as well as the interaction between diversity, algal cover, and nutrient concentration. …

AAA: US Health Care Equity

Everyone deserves access to quality health care. However, this is not a reality in the United States. There are systemic health inequities, and the marginalized populations suffer the consequences. To examine this issue, we focus our BLOG on regional health insurance coverage status, the role of intersectionality in health disparities, and people’s experiences with public insurance.

Facts And Stats: Incarceration Rates in America

What makes mass incarceration unique is that the laws driving the disproportionate incarceration of Black Americans make no mention of race. Michelle Williams, the author of The New Jim Crow shows how The War on Drugs played a leading role in the incarcerated population rising by over 300% between 1980 and 2018 (Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics). In contrast, the population of the United States only increased by about 65% according to the US census.

Data Chi Fraternity: The Playing Field of Higher Education

The world of higher education is difficult to distill. From the skewed dynamics of the college admission process to the infinite variations of the student experience to ultimate post-graduation outcomes, there is not just one thread that can fully tell the story of the college sphere. As college students with graduation on the horizon, we have taken the opportunity to visualize just some of the many forces of higher education.

The Hogwarts Hammers: Suicide Rates Across the World

Suicide is consistently one of the leading causes of death in the world with close to one million people dying by suicide each year (Source: World Health Organization). In fact, in the US alone, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 34. (Source: National Institute of Health) As you can see from the plot below, the issue has only been getting worse for the last 20 years. Suicide is an incredibly complex issue with many contributing factors.

giRlbosses: Sustainability on College Campuses across the US

As an extension of our Shiny project, our project examines how Amherst College prioritizes sustainability, and looks at the broader trajectory of sustainability embodied by higher education institutions in the US. By analyzing Amherst’s expressed sentiment and benchmark measures of performance in a national context, it provides a comprehensive tool for students, faculty, and administration to to hold our campus accountable. We hope to ultimately share our blog with Amherst’s incoming director of…

Shiny Sea Turtles: Netflix

Entertainment plays an important role in every human society, across time periods and across geographical locations. From the micro to the macro level, each individual is trying to find a new and better way to keep themselves engaged. One of the most prominent forms of entertainment in our recent history is cinema, a multifaceted tool for both those seeking intellectual stimulation and those hoping to unwind and power down. In the past few decades, we have observed a gradual transition from goin…

Five Chives: Environmental and Sociodemographic Determinants of Mortality in the US

In Louisiana, a row of toxic waste producing plants has gained national attention. In this area, large corporations continue to release larger and larger amounts of cancer-causing chemicals into the environment, and the effects on community health have been detrimental enough for this area to receive the name “Cancer Alley”. The impacts of this unregulated pollution are not equally distributed: the groups at risk are predominantly black and low-income communities. Around the country, industries …

Data Diggers: Kickstarter

Kickstarter, founded in 2009, is an online crowdfunding platform. Their mission is to help “bring creative projects to life” (Kickstarter, 2009) as individuals can create projects that draw others to support the process.

Resources